A letter sent to the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation on July 30, alleges that the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America union and its affiliates pressured Jewish graduate students at Cornell, MIT and Stanford into supporting the union despite a “pattern of antisemetic abuse.”
The letter alleges that such abuse includes open support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which advocates for economic sanctions of, and divestment from, Israel.
The letter continues that at Cornell, Jewish students faced what the letter terms as the UE’s “notorious ‘questionnaire’" after seeking religious accommodations, prompting two students to file formal EEOC complaints in June.
It states that the two students opposed financially supporting the UE and its local affiliate, Cornell Graduate Student United, “because of their open instances of antisemitism and attacks on Israel,” including a CGSU organizer calling a Jewish student an “apartheid apologist.”
“It’s wrong that union officials have the legal power to force anyone to pay union dues or fees as a condition of keeping their job, no matter what sort of industry they are engaged in,” Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens wrote in an emailed statement to The Sun. “While Foundation attorneys have been on the front lines providing legal aid to [Cornell, MIT, and Stanford] students, Congress’ help is also needed to investigate and target these discriminatory practices at their source.”
According to the letter, Jewish graduate students at MIT requested religious accommodations to avoid paying union dues after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel, citing the political stance of the UE affiliate at MIT, MIT GSU-UE. The letter continued that the UE denied these requests, arguing that Judaism does not forbid dues payments or union membership.
The letter further states that at Stanford, three graduate students, two Jewish and one Catholic, were required to complete what the letter describes as “abusive” religious-accommodation questionnaires by the UE at Stanford, UE-SGWU, before being excused from dues. The letter stated that the UE granted the students accommodations only after “NRTW lawyers intervened and threatened” to take legal action.
Cornell University withheld dues from CGSU-UE for six weeks this summer following conflict over how CGSU-UE was handling religious objections to union membership and dues. The parties finalized a settlement on July 16, which included an agreement that graduate students may make a charitable contribution in lieu of union fees based on “sincerely held religious belief.” The University resumed disbursing membership dues on July 31.
“We flatly reject the claim that condemning the state of Israel’s killing of civilians and starving of children, or supporting the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to pressure it to stop doing so, is in any way anti-Semitic,” UE General President Carl Rosen wrote in an emailed statement to The Sun. “As Israel continues to engage in what more and more people agree is genocide, it is clearer than ever that our members’ principled support of non-violent means to end the slaughter is on the right side of history.”
CGSU-UE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
